This is another of those ponderous, philosophical posts – I’ll try to follow up with pics and fewer words soon, I promise…
Given that we understand that evolution by natural selection is effective, in sometimes astounding ways, but also a bit haphazard and imprecise, questions sometimes arise about whether conscious decisions might be able to accomplish better results more directly.
This past Tuesday I met with a student down by the river, and afterward poked around to see what items of interest could be found. In the distance I espied a great blue heron (Ardea herodias) that appeared to be hunting, but a closer look revealed that it had been successful. I hadn’t brought the tripod and thus should not have been shooting with a long lens handheld,
I think most people know that there are certain kinds of fires that you don’t throw water on to extinguish, primarily grease, oil, gasoline, and electrical. In such cases, water is simply going to make matters much worse, either by splashing and floating the burning substances to disperse in a wider range, or by producing greater damage to equipment and creating the potential for electrocution.
Twenty-three years ago today, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched into low-earth orbit (meaning about 555 km, or 345 mi, above the surface of the Earth.) Since that time, it has produced perhaps the largest body of work of any single telescope, and certainly some of the most detailed. And just recently, NASA released a sweetheart.
Let’s start with some perspective. Everyone (who matters)
At Why Evolution Is True, Jerry Coyne has tackled yet another foofaraw among philosophers this particular topic is one of frequent appearance, being Does science assume naturalism? And ever so typical of philosophy, it begins with traditional assumptions and goes even further off course from there.
The duel comes over the various definitions of terms like naturalism and supernatural,
Walkabout podcast – How to bake a human
I probably shouldn’t ever look at the searches that get linked here because of that title. Be patient, and it will become clear what it means.
I have, on numerous previous occasions, examined the various drives and emotions that we have from an evolutionary perspective – for instance, that morality is (almost certainly) an offshoot of inherent
Several recent posts and articles have highlighted a problem that I’ve seen far too many times from, quite frankly, people who should probably know better. It’s rampant within philosophy, and unfortunately, there are still too many who think philosophy is something to be revered, so it tends to cross over into other disciplines as well. For lack of a better way of describing it right
Quite a few months back, perhaps as much as a few years ago, I started thinking about how and when I began to embrace critical thinking. I mentioned before that I used to believe in a whole lot of crap and gradually left it all behind, but was there some particular event that started this process? We like
Nice day out there, so it’s time to go see if there’s anything to be captured in mid-February, with the added incentive that it’s Charles Darwin’s birthday and I should illustrate natural selection. Hmmmm.
Okay, let’s start with the tiny winter flowers that can be found here in North Carolina, in corners and areas that see little traffic. With some poking around, I managed
Walkabout podcast – Marvel of design
I delayed this one slightly to serve as my Darwin Day post ;-)
I freely admit that there are some really stunning things to be found in nature – in fact, that’s what many of my ‘Too Cool‘ posts are intended to highlight. Predator/prey relationships, highly
